Still Burning

“Still Burning” tries to explore the way suffering is a gift and a catalyst to help one transition to a better state of living. The chorus lines are inspired by Rilke. I like the image of the heart reaching out like a hand." - Matt Slocum

"Extinguish my sight, and I can still see you;

plug up my ears, and I can still hear;

even without feet I can walk toward you,

and without mouth I can still implore.

Break off my arms, and I will hold you

with my heart as if it were a hand;

strangle my heart, and my brain will still throb;

and should you set fire to my brain,

I can still carry you with my blood.

- Ranier Maria Rilke, from The Book of Hours (trans. Annemarie S. Kidder)

"Still Burning" is the best of everything Divine Discontent has to offer: a melody that moves and soars, elegant string arrangements, pristine production, piano (not guitar) hooks, and devastating lyrics. I have to hold back to prevent myself from quoting the lyrics in full (read them here). I love ragged question of the bridge: "Why do you set out to break the one thing I have to give?" And I love the way the bit of the chorus is tagged on at the end of the bridge, how the question is answered yet not-answered by the lyric "but I know your heart is a hand."

It's Lent now, again, just like it is every year at this time since the tradition began, which was in the eighth century, according to the priest who presided over the Ash Wednesday service I attended last week (I believe him; I don't feel like Wikipediaing it). This priest also said something that I found both daunting and comforting, which is that Lent is a time for each of us to confront the chaos in our own hearts. Maybe it's just because I feel like now is the time for being "spiritual," and I'm thinking about it now, but the chaos keeps presenting itself -- more and more, it feels the spiritual question most pressing in the world is what the heck is really going on here? There are people telling us that science proves that God not only does not exist, but that anyone who believes so is the worst kind of mentally deranged lunatic, and that therefore the majority of human beings since pretty much the beginning of time have been wrong about almost everything. Yet there are so many things that have no satisfying "rational" explanation, questions cultural, social, linguistic, interpersonal, and so on, which seem to clearly to assert the uselessness of positivism in illuminating those things which seem to truly matter.

I've read recently that in the 21st century, religion is considered "resurgent," that postmodernism has so unmoored whole societies that they/we/some are "returning" to religious belief as a way to make sense of the world. I suppose I'll buy that, because the older and more confused I get, the more I realize that chaos is inevitable, and that one's goal perhaps ought not to be the avoidance of chaos and confusion and pain, but the husbanding of these things (and I use "husband" as a verb here with the knowledge that I can be described by that word as a noun, and wonder how well I have done what I'm trying to describe with that sentence). I also think that religion, far from being an airy-fairy escape, is something that allows us to do this.

On that note, "Still Burning" is not moaning and self-pitying (like, say, "Melting Alone"), but defiantly devotional, like the Rilke poem that inspires it. Pain, sorrow, and brokenness are real, period. As C.S. Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed, "The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't. Either way, we're for it."

Being alive is weird and confusing, but I really believe, even when I can't see it, that there is something for us to hold on to. If Lent is a time for confronting chaos, I'm glad I've just loaded the Sixpence discography onto my new iPod. They're faithful companions.

My apologies that this post became Ye Oldetime Amateur Theology Houre with Joel. We're about due for another post about how awesome it is to rock out.

The photo above, by the way, was used without permission. It comes from the Flickr user Tinchika, who I welcome to contact me if she'd like me to remove it. It just fit the song so well.